HIKER, 91, FELL 71 TIMES AND STILL FINISHED THE TRAIL

Dale Sanders, 91, is the oldest Appalachian Trail hiker again after finishing the 2,193-mile route on August 31, 2026, atop Mount Katahdin in Maine, by his own count after falling 71 times along the way. Sanders, who goes by the trail name Grey Beard, first set the age record in 2017, lost it to his friend M.J. Eberhart in 2021 and spent the following months planning to win it back, Vermont Public and the Associated Press reported.

Six of the falls were what Sanders calls hard ones. One landed him in the hospital for a short stay, and another came about 200 yards from the finish. After that last tumble, it took him a few minutes to get back on his feet, The New York Times reported.

He got up anyway and finished at the summit sign, where he stopped to pray. “I had to thank God, and I had to thank my support team and everybody that got me here,” he said.

Blood, a numb arm and a hospital stay

The trail runs from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Katahdin, but Sanders did not hike it in a straight line. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy counts a thru-hike as covering every section in any order within a year, pauses allowed. Sanders started September 6, 2025, in West Virginia, hopscotched around and took some breaks. The Trek reported he finished at 11:44 a.m., 359 days after he began.

In June 2026, he fell forward in a boulder field while coming down Killington Mountain in Vermont, scraping his legs, arms and hands. “Thank God nothing got broken, but I was banged up,” he said. “I didn’t rub the blood off, I just kept hiking.”

Weeks later, his left arm went numb and he ended up in a Maine hospital. Doctors feared a stroke, but it was a pinched nerve, and he was cleared to hike.

He still considered quitting. Sanders went home to Tennessee in early August to be with his wife after her mother died, and she talked him into going on. The Times reported he had left the trail with roughly 140 miles to go and returned on August 16 for a final push.

Caramel frappes and a two-minute nap

Sanders said the second attempt was far harder than his first, even after six months of training. Along the way, he said, thousands of people followed him on social media, and that changed what the hike was about.

“I wanna get it back, but right now, that’s secondary,” he said. “Right now, what’s the most important thing, and it’s one of the things that surprised me, is that people are motivated and given encouragement by my efforts.”

Some of his best days came in Pennsylvania, where “trail angels” brought him treats. “When people are taking care of you and bringing you caramel frappes on the trail, the rocks don’t matter,” he said.

Meredith Ewenson met him in June while leading a New Hampshire hike for 10 other women. Her group spotted him early one morning, and hours later he blazed past them, which is when they noticed the Grey Beard logo on his T-shirt. When the women reached an Appalachian Mountain Club hut around 4 p.m., Sanders told them, “I got here at noon.”

“My first thought was ‘Wow, his mobility is insane,'” Ewenson said. The next morning the group cheered as he did a “victory dance” before setting off again.

On one 12-mile day, he got wobbly, lay down on the trail, announced he needed a power nap and fell asleep. Two minutes later, he got up and kept hiking.

Eberhart, known as Nimblewill Nomad, traveled from Alabama to support him after hearing he was back on the trail, the Times reported. “This is not a competitive thing at all,” Eberhart said. “You have no idea how happy I am to have this relieved from me, and to have it go on.”

Sanders was born in Kentucky in 1935 and served in the Navy. He retired in 2002 after a long career in parks and recreation. He also holds the age record for paddling the entire Mississippi River, an 87-day trip that began on his 87th birthday.

After the finish, Sanders told the Times he was looking forward to resting, and that he had started thinking about a long hike in the Grand Canyon. He also told CBC Radio he was filing paperwork to have Guinness make the record official.

On October 13, 2026, Bartlett city officials honored him with a proclamation naming the day Dale “Grey Beard” Sanders Day, with Vice Mayor Jack Young presenting it, WREG reported.